"O changeful soul! now mounting like thin fire, Skyward and Godward; now like thing of night, Low-grovelling, smirched, and mid foul mud and mire Trailing white pinions given for starry flight, Darest _thou_ call Him Lord? "O morning's hope! O evening's dull despair! O lofty purpose! puny, paltry deed! O high resolve! heart big with longings fair! O loveless life that bears nor flower nor seed! Dare _ye_ to call Him Lord? "Yea, I would call Him Lord, and all the more For this my sin, else were I sore undone; Say, who should seek Him, if not I? He wore This fleshy garb, yet in Him sin was none, So may I call Him Lord. "No heaven I ask, no crystal-shining shore, Nor realm of flowers--this only would I pray, That mid all sinnings, stumblings sad and sore, I still may cling to Thee, dear Lord, alway, And still may call Thee Lord." She ended, and as her voice died away into a whisper sweet and low as the restful ripple of the rain, I hid my head between my hands and sobbed aloud, for something there was in the words and in her way of repeating them, which carried me back in thought to that vanished season of Youth and Hope when pictures and poetry, flowers and music, as well as sunrise, sunset, and the play of evening light upon the sea, had seemed but as the visible embodiment of my own thoughts, and were indeed to me as a part of my aspiration towards a loftier, lovelier life. And then I remembered what manner of man I was, and as the shadow-horror of my sin arose spectre-like between myself and my distant childhood, I saw that "little brother," the child that I once had been, shrink back and back with sad reproachful eyes, until with a sudden cry of anguish and despair he turned from me, and fled into the night. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XIII. _A DREAM OF ETERNAL REST._